Situational awareness, also known as SA by those in emergency services, is commonly defined as the understanding of an environment, its elements and how it changes with respect to time and other factors.
With that said, in respect to wildfire and other disaster environments, I prefer the American Psychological Associations (APA) definition; conscious knowledge of an immediate environment and the events that are occurring in it.
I also appreciate the expansion of the definition. “Situation awareness involves the perception of elements in the environment, comprehension of what they mean and how they relate to one another, and projection of future states”.
This speaks to me because it’s not just seeing or hearing what’s occurring but being able to comprehend and then project your own future action based on the information that you obtain or reconcile.
Many conversations can sprout from this topic such as talking about the OODA loop; observe, orient, decide and act but for the purpose of this article we will relate its relevance to rapidly evolving disasters such as catastrophic wildfire.
So, why is good situational awareness relevant to rapidly moving wildfires you ask? Or how does data play a key role in providing situational awareness?
Kevin Fetterman
The answer to these questions will evolve through this article, but let’s start with the data.
All too often I hear from local, state and federal partners talking about “their” data, “their” information, “their” situational awareness.
These conversations always make me think…but isn’t it the community’s data and shouldn’t it be driving the community’s desire for situational awareness?
Let’s take a deeper dive together.
If there’s a wildfire occurring in your community, isn’t it your right to know whatever information is available, when it is available?
Shouldn’t you be made aware of the size of the threat, the potential and any projections made by on-scene incident commanders?
I am not sure where the notion of delaying this information for “validation” came from, but isn’t the incident commander or an aerial resource saying it on the radio, validation enough?
What right looks like, is often discussed in leadership circles.
For me, right looks like getting the information out as fast and as accurately as possible.
We owe this to our families, our friends, our neighbors and our community’s.
They deserve the latest information to make the best decisions for their families.
This is really the origin story of Watch Duty. For decades firefighters have had limited tools to gather or maintain situational awareness.
Many agencies have had to rely on a hodge podge of random websites and evolving social media.
There really hasn’t been a single source of real-time truth for wildfire information…until now!
Rewind to 2021 and Watch Duty’s Cofounder, John Clark Mills, who, after leaving the hustle and bustle of San Francisco and technology entrepreneurship, settled in the hills of Sonoma, CA.
Only to be impacted by a local wildfire without any real information available.
I have told John, I think this is a good example of the moons coming into alignment, it had to be a very specific set of circumstances that placed a genius mind, engineer, creator, but more importantly someone with the will and the means to piece together all of the people and technologies to create an application or more so a people driven technology company, Watch Duty.
Certainly, the need has always been there.
But now it’s tangible, it’s real, trustworthy and supported by over 300 of the most passionate, driven people on the planet.
It has provided many the opportunity to give back and be part of something greater.
This is our special sauce and passion and the will to help our neighbors.
The ironic thing is that it started off as a tool for the community, but shortly thereafter, it was adopted by the fire service.
The fire service has utilized it as a tool to improve their own situational awareness.
My own story comes with a bit of humility and some might argue, comedy.
I happen to be the fire department Duty Chief during a hot summer day.
In the Orange County Fire Authority, the Duty Chief role is a Division Chief who is responsible for agency-wide coordination and decision making in concert with the Emergency Command Center Battalion Chief (known as the Duty Officer) and the Assistant Chief of Operations (Ops Chief).
One of the most important things for a Duty Chief is to know what’s going on both at the county level but also at the region level (situational awareness) to understand what resources we may commit to emerging incidents.
Kevin Fetterman
This particular day of my Duty Chief week, it was a weekend and I was at home.
As I walked into the kitchen, my wife asked what I thought about the fire in a neighboring community? I thought to myself…what fire?
She continued giving me the report on conditions advising it was moving uphill in alignment with the slope and it had potential for extended attack.
I actually started to become a little uncomfortable…I hadn’t heard of any fires. I had Motorola and BK radios, cell phones with dual sims, Starlink, etc. and “I was the Duty Chief” enter ego and bravado.
Well, it turns out she was ahead of me (as she often is) and had learned of a new application called Watch Duty and now she had the latest information.
So obviously after downloading the application and upgrading to Pro, I took this newly discovered information back to the rest of our leadership team.
At the time, only about 50% of our leaders were aware of it.
Subsequently, we initiated a Watch Duty Teams Enterprise account and it was given to all of our Chief Officers.
I tell this story, albeit it a little embarrassing because even for an agency as progressive as ours, one that leaned into technology/information, it was not clear to us.
This always makes me wonder (and passionate) about how to get the application out to the rest of the fire service and community so it’s clear to them.
Wildfires are broken down into three different timelines: initial attack, which is the first two hours of the incident, extended attack, after the first two hours up until the next morning at 0700 hours and then major incidents, incidents that last more than one day or multiple operational periods.
Kevin Fetterman
Generally, incidents are the most chaotic during the first two hours and the chaos/lack of clarity can continue through the first day or days of an incident.
This chaos often occurs because situations rapidly evolve, are dynamic, involve multiple agencies, multiple jurisdictions, changing weather conditions, numerous resources responding, lack of understanding on fire potential and generally, this all occurs while additional personnel are still being mobilized.
During this chaotic time, it’s not uncommon for incident commanders to have to make complex decisions based on limited information under time compression.
In many situations, 80% of the information is adequate to make a time sensitive decision.
After all, an 80% decision made in time is better than a perfect decision made too late to execute on tactical or strategic objectives.
If you’ve had the pleasure of using Watch Duty, you know one of the things it does well is put all of the information together in an easy to use, easy to understand format.
It reconciles incident reporting, radio reports, AI driven wildfire cameras, satellite detection, sensor aircraft, PIO reporting and on the ground validated reporting into a single easy to use geospatial referenceable platform.
Kevin Fetterman
No more scouring the internet and trying to determine what is real and what is misinformation.
Your perspective or position on an incident will drive how and what information you need.
Not every person will need diagrams of the electrical grids but many will use evacuation zones, or real-time fire perimeters.
Whether you are in command or supporting your elderly neighbor, having access to information empowers you to make better decisions.
In the end, observe the situation around you, orient yourself to the facts and possibilities, make decisions based on the information you know and then act.
